


biting the hand of fate

by thequeenofokay



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenofokay/pseuds/thequeenofokay
Summary: Lyra is nearly twelve, and Marisa thinks with trepidation that she looks more like Asriel every day. Where her jaw and the shape of her eyes could have once been anyone’s they are now distinctly his. Even her mannerisms are growing distinctly more like her true father’s. The fear that one day Edward will look at the child and see the truth sits heavy in her chest.—snippets from universes in which marisa and asriel take a slightly different path, make a slightly different choice.
Relationships: Lord Asriel & Lyra Belacqua, Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter
Comments: 35
Kudos: 291





	1. i'm not the same, nor you with your little one

**Author's Note:**

> \+ this was originally intended to be a oneshot but then some of little AUs grew a bit and it seemed more sensible to split them up into three or four. they're essentially little what ifs based on lines from the books.
> 
> \+ also fyi i didn't finish rereading the books before i wrote this, so its a smush of tv and book canon. i'm also not really sure i have characterisations down :/
> 
> \+ fic title from "hallucinate" by oliver riot, chapter title from "sol" by blanco white.

universe i: marisa raises lyra

_“And when the baby was born—that’s you, girl—it was clear from the look of you that you didn’t favor her husband, but your true father…”_

* *

The baby is born while Mr Coulter is away on business, and Marisa thinks that, maybe, God has decided to smile on her for the first time since the wretched child had been conceived.

‘She looks just like you, ma’am,’ the nurse says. It’s not entirely true, Marisa thinks, but there’s just enough of her in the child so as to make the Asriel less striking. Her fears have not come true.

She neglects to inform Asriel about the birth of his child for several days. She reasons with herself that it’s really none of his business anyway; the child will never be his to raise.

When he finally comes to her, a day before Edward is to return, he holds the child in his arms and stares at her in a soft sort of bemusement that has Marisa briefly wondering if she has made a mistake. She puts the thought out of her head—there’s no other way, and it’s not like Asriel would really be willing to give up on his adventuring to raise a child anyway.

‘Does she have a name?’ he asks, not looking away from the baby.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I had hardly given it a thought.’

‘Lyra,’ he tells her. ‘She should be named Lyra.’

‘Lyra,’ she repeats, and then something unkind comes over her. ‘Lyra Coulter. How pretty,’ she says, smiling, and she doesn’t miss the way his eyes snap to her with that dark, blazing look.

* *

At first, the child is a strange nuisance, who Marisa would rather that the nursemaid and the nanny took care of without any real input from her. She is a symbol of Marisa’s indiscretion, of her failure to be _perfect_.

The little girl cries loudly and crawls quickly, but her campaign to wear down Marisa’s resolve against her is slow and quiet, until one day Marisa is holding the her daughter in her arms and she realises, quite suddenly, that she would kill anyone who tried to hurt her.

Edward’s opinion on Lyra, however, stays constant as she grows. He wished for a boy who he could mould into his successor, so the little girl just will not do. So long as she grows up to be polite and dutiful, the only time Edward shows a real interest is when she can be dressed up to hold his hand and gather up votes. In return, Lyra is generally disinterested in her supposed father once she is old enough to realise that he has no patience for her endless babbling.

Marisa supposes this makes the whole thing a little less cruel.

* *

Little Lyra Coulter grows up in pretty dresses in a stunning London flat that was undoubtedly not designed for a child to live in, but hosts many a cocktail party at which the guests fawn delightedly over the girl.

Lyra doesn’t care much for the parties. Grownups coo over her like she’s a little doll, and her mother always scolds her more harshly if she isn’t on her best behaviour.

But she sees her mother’s friend Lord Asriel at parties, and he always brings her little presents and stories of the great adventures he’s been away on. Tonight, he has given her little chocolatl shaped like fish and he tells her a tale of his most recent trip to the North, where he fought Tartars and bargained with _panserbjørne_ and almost died in an avalanche while she listens with rapt attention.

‘You mustn’t let him fill your head with nonsense,’ her mother says. She places her hand on Lyra’s shoulder, but she has her eyes are narrowed at Lord Asriel.

He scoffs. ‘It’s less nonsense than what she learns cooped up in here. She’ll be a proper lady yet, Marisa.’

‘Oh? And what would you have her do—run around in the North with the bears?’

Lyra thinks he seems to find the idea amusing. ‘It’s no place for a child,’ he agrees, ‘but she should see more than London. How else can she learn to be curious?’

‘She has enough curiosity as it is,’ her mother complains, glaring at Lord Asriel like she blames him for every time Lyra has scraped a knee or ripped a dress climbing to the roof or running through the park.

There is a moment where Lyra feels something in the back of her mind, on the tip of her tongue, like when she had forgotten where she’d left the little toy snow leopard that Lord Asriel had given her for weeks, only to suddenly remember that she had left it on top of a kitchen cupboard when she had been pretending it was a mountain she was scaling.

But then her father is there, greeting Lord Asriel loudly, and whatever it was that Lyra almost remembered is gone.

‘Lord Asriel, you truly spoil her,’ her father says, seeing the chocolatl in Lyra’s hands.

‘Forgive me,’ Lord Asriel says. His voice has gone flatter than when he tells her stories or speaks to mother, like he is suddenly bored.

‘Don’t worry on it,’ her father says. ‘It’s only a shame you never had one of your own to spoil, I suppose.’

A savage look passes abruptly across Lord Astriel’s face and his snow leopard lets out a low growl, but her father doesn’t seem to notice it. ‘A pity,’ is all he says in short agreement.

He excuses himself from the party.

‘I think it’s time for you to go to bed,’ her mother says, and Lyra agrees without protest.

* *

Once, Lyra’s tutor takes her home early after an excursion to a terribly boring play at the theatre, and Lyra finds the flat quiet and her mother nowhere to be found. But there is a bottle of Tokay open on the kitchen counter, and a man’s coat thrown carelessly across the sofa in the lounge.

‘D’you think mother has friends round? She didn’t mention anything. Maybe it’s a secret, scholarly meeting,’ she says to Pan.

‘What would scholars need secret meetings for?’ Pan questions, sniffing at the Tokay.

Lyra narrows her eyes. ‘Because it’s so dangerous and important that they _dare_ not speak about it in public,’ she says. Sometimes, she thinks her mother might lead some kind of double life that she cannot tell Lyra about when she goes away for days at a time for Important Oxford Meetings.

She prowls into the hall, imagining herself as an intrepid spy. ‘I hear something,’ Pan hisses to her.

Then the door from her mother’s study opens, and she is laughing brightly, her hand on Lord Asriel’s arm, but she freezes when she sees Lyra.

‘Ah,’ Lord Asriel says. He ruffles Lyra’s hair. ‘I’ll be leaving, Marisa.’

Her mother gets that terrible, cold look on her face that Lyra knows to fear. ‘You must never speak of this,’ she hisses, close to Lyra’s face. ‘Not a word to your father.’

Lyra promises without hesitation.

Later, as she lies in bed with Pan curled at her side, she wonders quietly to him what it means. ‘Why couldn’t father know if they’re doing research?’

Pan’s face furrows. ‘They must be doing something wrong,’ he says. ‘Maybe it’s _heresy_.’ Lyra has heard her father talk often of heresy, with a look of scorn on his face.

‘Hm.’ Maybe he’s right. Maybe, for everything she has been taught about obedience to the Magisterium, her mother _is_ a heretic.

* *

Lyra is nearly twelve, and Marisa thinks with trepidation that she looks more like Asriel every day. Where her jaw and the shape of her eyes could have once been anyone’s they are now distinctly his. Even her mannerisms are growing distinctly more like her true father’s. The fear that one day Edward will look at the child and see the truth sits heavy in her chest, especially as he grows older and more erratic.

She is thankful that Asriel spends more time than not in the North now, despite how much it might hurt that traitorous part of her that Lyra pried open. The less chance there is of Edward seeing father and daughter side by side, the safer they all will be.

In the end, the downfall of it all is more _chaotic_ than she could have imagined. Asriel arrives at her flat without warning while Edward is at the gentleman’s club and she is helping Lyra with her books in the study. He is still in his travelling clothes, talking about Dust like a madman while Stelmaria paces around him. ‘You have to come north with me, Marisa,’ he pleads. His hands grip her forearms in desperation. ‘You have to see it for yourself.’

She protests, trying to extricate herself from his grip. She can feel Lyra’s wide eyes moving between the two of them, enraptured. ‘Don’t be foolish, Asriel. My life is here. My daughter is here.’

‘We’ll take her, then,’ he says, as though it’s that simple.

Marisa hears Lyra draw breath to respond with enthusiasm to this idea. ‘No. You should go, Asriel.’

‘Don’t you see?’ The impatience that she cannot see his point of view is spilling from him. Somewhere behind him, she hears movement, but she cannot turn from him. ‘This could be our chance to be a—a family.’

A door slams.

Distantly, Marisa is aware that the last handful of time Edward has gone drinking with his friends, he had gotten so drunk that they had packed him into a cab and sent him home early.

Now, he stands in the doorway, swaying slightly.

‘What,’ he spits, lurching forwards, ‘did you say?’

Marisa can see exactly how it must look. Asriel is still holding her tightly, calling them a _family_ , and with Lyra on his other side only a blind man wouldn’t work it out.

‘Edward,’ she begins, pulling herself free of Asriel’s grip and attempting to move in front of her daughter, ‘it isn’t what you—’

‘Isn’t what I think?’ He shoves her aside.

Edward has a gun. He keeps one in the drawer of his desk, and Marisa doesn’t really remember seeing him reach for it, but now it’s levelled at Lyra.

‘I should kill her,’ he says. His face is an awful purple colour, and he’s shaking slightly. ‘You’ve made a fool of me for years, and if this gets out—I’ll be done. _Finished_.’ He punctuates the last statement by jabbing the barrel of the gone towards Lyra.

The movement is enough to spur Asriel into movement. He lunges for Edward, and the gun clatters into Marisa’s hands.

The whole, horrible confrontation that she has been dreading for twelve years is over. Marisa pulls the trigger without a second’s hesitation. Her husband is dead at her feet.

She has the urge to laugh or sob. Instead, she lets Asriel take the gun from her hand and tuck it away in his coat. Lyra is frozen behind him, clutching her dæmon to her chest. He takes her by the elbow and says, ‘We should be going.’


	2. clinging love and falling true

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They sit together on the edge of the abyss after Metatron has fallen. They broke his wings, broke them beyond use and threw him down into the depths. Marisa’s ankle is twisted at an unnatural angle, but she seems to take little notice of it. There’s blood on her hands and blood running down Asriel’s temple.
> 
> ‘We weren’t supposed to live,’ she says. ‘You know that.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ firstly: thank you for all the lovely comments on the last chapter--i might go back to that concept in it at some point. we'll see.
> 
> \+ this chapter doesnt follow on from the last; instead we’re doing 'what if marisa and asriel never fell into the abyss', and it's essentially a mishmash of questionable science, bad parenting, and archaeological concepts being applied in a way so dodgy i'm going to fail my degree in it. (or 'if i wrote hdm i would simply not throw masriel into the abyss, rip to pullman but i'm different.')
> 
> \+ there are probably some inconsistencies between the science/theology in this and in the books, partially because i couldn't really remember some of the details, and which of those details marisa and asriel were aware of. there's also no spoilers for the secret commonwealth because i am but a poor student who hasn't had time to read it, but there is spoilers if you've only seen the show.
> 
> \+ the title is from 'fire-scene' by s. carey.

universe ii: marisa and asriel don't fall into the abyss

_We won’t live, will we? We won’t survive like the ghosts?_

* *

They sit together on the edge of the abyss after Metatron has fallen. They broke his wings, broke them beyond use and threw him down into the depths. Marisa’s ankle is twisted at an unnatural angle, but she seems to take little notice of it. There’s blood on her hands and blood running down Asriel’s temple.

She buries her face in his chest and he can feel her sobbing again. He strokes her hair and says nothing for a long time, instead waiting until she no longer shakes with tears.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks. His thumb traces across her jawline, tilting her face up to look at him.

‘We weren’t supposed to live,’ she says. ‘You know that.’

He can’t quite place the look in her eyes. It’s scared in a way that he hasn’t seen in such a long time—maybe not since he took Lyra from her and took her husband. She has lost her purpose.

He could lie and tell her that this was plan all along, but she’d see through it. They should have died here, together. This should have been the end. ‘I know,’ he says. He meant it to sound lighter, but his voice comes out distant and hollow.

* *

They sit around the dinner table in Oxford. There is a tray of tea and little cakes laid out, mostly untouched. They’ve barely seen Lyra since they left the cavern, and though Asriel has heard bits and pieces of her story second-hand, now she tells it to them herself. When she has finished, Marisa looks at Asriel, and the pieces of the plan they had been putting together fall into place.

‘Lyra,’ Marisa says. ‘We want you to know that if you need us, we will always be there for you.’ It’s a little more saccharine than Asriel would have put it. He tries not to let his distaste show in his expression.

Lyra’s eyes go wide, but she seems more curious than upset. ‘Are you leaving?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ Asriel says. ‘The Magisterium are weakened now, but it won’t stay that way. We must find a way to _prove_ your story. We must find a way to show the people that they make their own way.’

Lyra nods. ‘The Republic of Heaven,’ she says, more to herself than to them. ‘Where will you go?’ she asks. Her daemon is pacing across the back of her chair, pausing every so often to eye the monkey with suspicion. Asriel doesn’t blame it.

‘Wherever we must,’ Marisa says.

‘Can I come with you?’ Lyra asks, like an afterthought.

‘No,’ Marisa tells her sharply, and then, softer, ‘you’ve already discussed with the Master and Dame Hannah that you will study the alethiometer in Oxford, Lyra. That is as important as our work.’

Lyra glares. The obstinate expression is so common on her face that Asriel thinks it’s a wonder that it hasn’t stuck in place. ‘You’re _abandoning_ me _again_.’

Marisa makes a noise of insulted surprise, and Asriel says, ‘Don’t be foolish, Lyra. You know this must be done.’

‘That en’t the _point_.’

He knows the point. The point is that they’ll never manage to be a picture book family. ‘That’s how it is,’ he tells her. ‘That’s just how it _is_.’

* *

They begin in Paris, prowling the shelves of the _Bibliothèque Nationale_. Asriel passes his days compiling everything Lyra told him into pages of manuscript, and when he’s finished, he reads tomes on alchemy, philosophy, astrology while Marisa pours through dusty theological manuscripts. They have both strayed from the bounds of their field of experimental theology, but they were both scholars once, and that hunger for the _truth_ has returned in him with a fervour.

‘Grumman believed,’ he says, ‘that there was evidence of ancient civilisations under the ice.’

Marisa looks at him across _Popular customs and traditions of Aethiopia_. ‘I remember,’ she says. ‘He alluded to such a thing in a paper and the Magisterium threw a fit.’

‘If we could prove his theory,’ Asriel begins, ‘that there were civilisations long before they would have us believe—do you think it would be enough?’

He sees something light up behind her eyes. ‘It might,’ she agrees. ‘You’d need to find a way to _prove_ their age.’

‘The answer isn’t in Dust,’ he says. ‘Dust doesn’t know time.’

She nods thoughtfully. ‘Something else then,’ she says. She closes her book and takes his hand, tugging him to his feet. ‘Come on,’ she tells him, ‘we’ll think on it over dinner.’

They sip Tokay at a restaurant overlooking the Seine. Being with her is different, now, to how it was when she was married. Sometimes, he thinks that it lacks danger now, and he wonders if he’ll grow bored of it soon. Then, he’ll watch her charm a waiter into giving them drinks for free, and remember that this is _Marisa_ , and she could never lack danger.

* *

They take the train from Paris to Milan.

She writes letters to Lyra and receives none back. He sees the way it eats at her, when letters arrive from old colleagues in London and Berlin and Sveden and never from Lyra. He doesn’t try to comfort her with words; he was never any good at comforting her in any other way than kissing it away and hoping she understands.

Her body is wrapped around his beneath the sheets, skin to skin. ‘I’m still young enough,’ she says. Her chin is propped against his chest. She traces lines across his skin with her sharp fingernails. ‘We could have another.’

Asriel sees the image of a baby with dark hair and his eyes in Marisa’s arms. To the side of the bed, Stelmaria’s ears prick. ‘It would never have to be a secret.’

‘None of the fuss of last time,’ Marisa agrees, and he lets out a breath in amusement at how casually she treats the events that led to her husband’s death.

‘We’d raise it while we travelled?’

‘We would raise it ourselves and make it a good little thing. What do you think?’ Her nails bite in a little as she waits for his answer.

He lets the fantasy hang in the still air of their bedroom for a moment longer. ‘No,’ he says. There can be no other child but Lyra. ‘You know it wouldn’t be right.’

He feels her hum against his chest, and she does not protest.

* *

They spend a month alone in an observatory in the Alps, recording the stars. ‘This is a mistake,’ Marisa insists. ‘The answers aren’t in the stars.’ She slams her hand against the glass window of the observation room. ‘They’re down here, Asriel.’

Behind her, the mountains glow red in the sunset. She looks almost ablaze. Its moments like this when he is reminded of her dark, awful soul.

It’s times like this when he remembers why he fell in love with her. She burns brighter than anyone else.

When he grips her arms, she looks surprised at first.

‘If I asked you to marry me,’ he asks her, ‘would you?’

She smiles a cruel smile. He feels a kind of honour that she doesn’t feel the need to hide her viciousness behind lies with him. ‘We were never the kind of people who should marry, I think.’

It’s a _no_ , then, but he pushes on. He takes a step, and her back is against the glass window. Behind them, he hears Stelmaria let out a low growl. ‘Maybe we were the kind of people who should only marry each other,’ he says.

She looks up at him, her jaw set. ‘We should live together,’ she whispers, ‘we should die together. Is that not enough?’

He kisses her, with sudden, fierce desperation. She bites his lip. He presses his fingers into her throat, so she hisses and scratches at his skull. She’s right—it is enough.

* *

Marisa insists on Prague next, where the houses of the alchemists still stand as they were. They go east next, their momentum faltering. When they were young, he would leave her behind in London, circling back weeks or months later. Now, she is the restless one. She disappears for hours or days on her own missions.

They bicker from the forests of Transylvania to the Black Sea. In Odessa, she tells him they should take some time apart. ‘We’ll only get sick of each other,’ she says. ‘It would be such a waste to end up hating you again.’ She picks absently at lint on the shoulder of his jacket while she talks, and her monkey flexes its little fingers in time with her movements. ‘Don’t you agree?’

He doesn’t. Not really. He would continue to follow her around the world without complaint. But more than he wants to be with her, he wants to be as good as her—better, even. He cannot win if she knows he needs her more than she needs him. ‘Of course,’ he says.

‘Well then—’ She smooths her hands down from his shoulders so that they come to rest against his chest, ‘—that’s settled.’

‘Where will you go?’ he asks.

‘There’s a ship leaving for Constantinople tomorrow,’ she says. ‘I have a ticket.’

Of course—she has it all planned out. She was never going to give him the opportunity to go with her. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I heard a rumour that the Turks tried to kill you once, so it’s for the best that you don’t join me.’ She smiles her charming, practiced smile. It stings.

He considers baiting her into an argument. She might stay a while if he did, just to see it through to end. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

Her brow furrows and her mouth pinches. ‘How should I know?’ she snaps, and then, softer, ‘You could go north again. You must miss it.’

‘How long will you be gone?’ he asks. ‘How will I find you again?’

‘We always find each other again,’ she says. ‘Will you come and say goodbye to me at the boat tomorrow?’

He clenches and unclenches his jaw. ‘Of course,’ he says. She smiles and presses a kiss to his cheek.

A day later, he watches the steamer as it makes its steady way out of the harbour. He watches Marisa on the deck until her shape is no more than a red smudge. He feels like he’s living a strange parody of something romantic, with his lover leaving him for adventures which he can’t be a part of.

* *

Once she’s gone, he stews in their hotel room for weeks before he can grudgingly admit to himself that Marisa had wound her way into his life too tightly. He needed her too much.

Eventually, he decides she was right. He does miss the north and its vast, unknowable cold. On a whim, he sends a letter to Lyra to ask if she’d like to join him, and he tells himself its because he feels a sense of fatherly duty to expand her horizons, and not because he needs the company.

He meets her at the station in St. Petersburg. She is wrapped in thick, well-tailored furs. She glares up at the sky as she steps onto the platform with her small trunk, like she can scare away the cool April wind through sheer force of will. It reminds him disconcertingly of Marisa.

Lyra crosses the platform to where he waits. She is fifteen now. He’s missed chunks of her childhood before, but this time it is somehow different. She seems unnervingly grown up.

‘You aren’t travelling with Mrs. Coulter any longer,’ she says. It’s not a question—he’d told her as much in the letter.

‘No,’ he agrees.

‘For good?’

‘No.’

‘When did you last see her?’

He bristles a little under the persistence of her questioning. ‘A month ago, maybe. What does it matter?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Lyra says. She readjusts her hold on her case. ‘Where are we going?’

He leads them from the platform to a waiting cab. ‘Further north,’ he tells her. ‘The Arctic Institute had a research station in Lapland. I need to go there.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll see,’ he says. ‘If you’re coming with me, you’ll have to work hard. Otherwise you can head back to Brytain. I don’t want you causing trouble.’

‘I know,’ Lyra says. ‘I _will_ work hard.’

They fall into silence. The cab rattles through St. Petersburg’s wide streets. ‘She stopped sending letters,’ Lyra says suddenly. ‘I thought something might have happened.’

It takes him a moment to realise what she means. Marisa had stopped writing when they’d been working in the Alps, almost two years ago. He’s sent a few postcards since, but he supposes he must not have mentioned Lyra’s mother in them. ‘I’d have made sure you knew,’ he says, ‘if anything went wrong.’

Lyra lets out a huff. She doesn’t seem to believe him.

‘Your mother thought you didn’t want to hear from her,’ he says.

The silence stretches. Lyra picks at a thread on her coat. ‘She can still write,’ she says, ‘even if I don’t reply. I liked her letters.’

‘I’ll tell her when I see her next,’ Asriel says.

* *

It takes weeks to cross the barren tundra to the remote research station and a month after that to repurpose an old ice fishing drill for its new purpose—to core ice.

Lyra keeps her word—she works long days on the glacier without much complaint, and in the evenings, she helps Asriel to analyse the ice samples. He is painfully aware that this is the most time he’s ever spent with his daughter. Mostly, they’ve worked in a relatively comfortable silence, or found a way to develop something like a rapport.

The sun barely sets here. He finds her staring into the vast wasteland late one evening.

‘You always put the greater good above me,’ she says. She doesn’t look round, but her dæmon narrows his eyes at him from her shoulder. She lets harsh arctic wind steal the power from her words. ‘Until I _was_ the greater good—then you tried to die for me.’

‘I never died,’ Asriel mutters, knowing he sounds petulant.

‘You would have.’ Her voice quavers a little. ‘Serafina Pekkala told me so.’

Stelmaria brushes against his leg, sensing his unease.

‘Was killing Metatron not enough?’ she asks. ‘Did you never consider just… stopping?’

‘I’m a scholar, Lyra,’ he says. ‘It’s never enough. Not until we’re all free.’

Lyra turns to him. There are tears frozen on her cheeks, but her eyes are blazing. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she says. ‘Will it always be like this? When you come back, will it be for me, or for another war?’

‘There are things more important than the individual, Lyra,’ he says.

She nods. It seems to be the answer she expected. ‘Then you should know the Magisterium are getting stronger again. They’re threatening universities and newspapers.’

‘When the time it right, we’ll finish them, Lyra. I promise. Your mother and I are strong enough,’ he insists.

Lyra turns away. ‘You too deserve each other, you know,’ she mutters. ‘You really do.’

* *

Summer ends, and Lyra must return to her studies at St. Sophia’s. Asriel goes south again, his mind occupied by Lyra’s words about the Magisterium. He pays a visit to an old friend at the Natural History museum in Bécs-Wien and stays the autumn without intending it, captured by the museum’s vast collections. He sets up his own lab there and settles into a routine.

He finds his breakthrough in the alchemists’ books from Prague and the layers of ash in the ice core from Russia and the museum’s array of ancient artefacts. There is something in the _charbon_ of things which lived once which fades after they die.

His discovery absorbs him through the winter. A part of him wishes Marisa were here to he could show it to her. He pushes the thought away.

The frost has melted and there are leaves on the trees in the gardens of the city’s palaces that he frequents to clear his mind when she reappears. She is standing on the steps of the museum, waiting for him. She’s caught the sun on her nose and her cheeks. It reminds him of when he first met her, when she was young and rosy instead of nearing forty.

‘Did you miss me?’ she asks, and he kisses her, cruel but sweet all at once so that she knows—of course he missed her, but it still burns a little that she left.

He takes her to a café with grand chandeliers and marble tables, still as desperate to finally impress her as he was decades ago. ‘Where did you go?’ he asks her over coffee and _torte_.

‘I told you,’ she says, setting down her cup with a sharp _clink_. ‘I went to Constantinople.’

‘And then?’

She smiles, happy to have her misdirection found out. ‘You came to Africa with me once—you know I was always fascinated. I went east, not west this time, though.’ She leans forward a little, like this is a delicious secret that she’ll share only with him. ‘The Magisterium has never been as strong there, so people have been able to search for… time, I suppose, without accusations of heresy. And there’s a valley of sorts, where the earth broke and—I don’t quite understand it—but it protected the most ancient things.’

She picks up her cup again when she’s finished and sips, waiting.

‘And?’

‘I brought you a present,’ she says. ‘I’ve had it sent to your laboratory.’

‘What can it prove?’

‘I was intrigued by an Afric tale I read from the same area,’ she says, like she hasn’t heard him, ‘about a fox, who tricked all of the other animals into exposing their weaknesses to it, and it used their weaknesses against them until they destroyed each other. Fitting, hm?’

At his feet, Stelmaria’s head raises. Marisa’s monkey watches, unblinking.

‘Only I didn’t like the ending so much,’ she continues, ‘because, you see, the fox finds another fox, and it tricks it into death too. It seems a lonely thing, to rid oneself of their equal. Wouldn’t you say?’

He feels the weight in her words. ‘Of course,’ he says. Whatever comes next, they are in it together.

She smiles—her real smile, the one that doesn’t ask anything of him. ‘Now,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you’ve been busy while I was away. Let us prove Grumman’s theory.’

There’s a partial skeleton waiting for him back at the museum, but it’s not like any skeleton he’s ever seen before. It will do nicely.

* *

In the heat of summer, a letter arrives from Oxford, addressed in Lyra’s writing. Asriel watches from his desk as Marisa rips into it. He can guess its contents; the Magisterium’s men grow in number every day. They’re beginning to breathe words like _heresy_ down his neck again.

‘I think,’ Marisa says, smiling, ‘that it is time we returned to England.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ Asriel's discovery is [radiocarbon dating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating), the skeleton is a Lyra's world equivalent of[Lucy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_\(Australopithecus\)), and the story Marisa tells at the end is an Ethiopian folk tale which can be found [here](https://www.ethiopianfolktales.com/en/afar/31-brains-not-brawn).
> 
> \+ i'm on tumblr [@joanbeauforts](https://joanbeauforts.tumblr.com/).


End file.
